Brown Serviettes/Table Napkins and Kitchen/Tea Towels

This warp took a bit longer, but I'm finished. 

 

I wove two tea towels, one being extra long, and 10 serviettes, warp end piece shorter than the rest. From a 10m warp, I thought I'd get heaps, which is why I started with tea towels, but it was darned close at the end. Good thing I didn't weave more towels! At another time, in another headspace, I'm thinking of making an ultra short warp, or a skinny one, to use these up the rest of cottolin and some cotton to make useful things. These yarns make wonderful pieces, but they are dusty weaving and, goodness me, winding on the pirns, I'm happy to take a break for now.

These were woven with the same Swedish cottolins, 394 ends, 21EPI, just under 47cm wide on the loom, 40.5cm after wet finish, hot regular machine cycle, double rinse. They are rather genteel-sized serviettes; "Afternoon Tea Serviettes" if folks still lead that kind of life, but too robust in texture. What can I say, I made them, so they are functional. Ben thinks they can be used as lunch mats. 

For serviettes, I like no plain weave showing on the A-side, but to add that extra length, I hemmed it like tea towels. When I was pressing the very last piece, I realize I could have added warp ends to the two selvedges to add another inch to the width. Talk about too late! :-D
 

It may be difficult to detect, but I managed eight different color orders. (It's hard for me to see, holding them in my hands, too.) I had two weft colors, B and C, of large spools and two, A and D, smaller. Each serviette had 16 weft "repeats" (strictly speaking, not repeats, but variations; is there such a term as treadling blocks??) Using three colors in a piece, the color used in the first block and the last were the same, so I came up with eight ways to combine them, with B or C at the start/finish, so eight pieces are similar but not identical: 

 

  B-A-C-B-A-C-B-A-C-B-A-C-B-A-C-B

  B-C-A-B-C-A-B-C-A-B-C-A-B-C-A-B

 

and so on. Piece #5, I thought I'd be cleaver and weave backwards, (from the bottom of treadling,) which made it just in the reverse order of weaving from the top, Piece #3. Duh!

 

The previous lot of towels were slightly gappy at 21EPI, and I read on FB someone was planning towels at around 5 per 10cm, 25EPI, but these being serviettes, I stayed with 21EPI for softness. 

The two tea towels. The orange is ours, pure stash-busting, and I used up two oranges; I had to use some thrums for one. The four browns: my sister has been a pottery enthusiast forever, who, like my brother and I, started her dream hobby in her 40s. Her personal favorites are natural, earthy colors. In her clothes as well. For ages, I thought I'd like to weave a piece of cloth for her to put her work on when she photographs her pieces; I vaguely imagined undyed and naturally colored wool. I was thinking about that again when she sent me a care package a fortnight ago, and, one day while weaving I looked down at the current project. She may be a more plain weave kind of a girl, with less busy colors, but now at least she has one option.

Onwards!